Scientist dismisses Stephen Hawking's doomsday predictions

RENOWNED neuroscientist Rafael Yuste on Wednesday dismissed the latest doomsday predictions of Stephen Hawking, saying the British astrophysicist “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” In a recent lecture in London, Hawking indicated that advances in science and technology will lead to “new ways things can go wrong,” especially in the field of artificial intelligence. Yuste, a Columbia University neuroscience professor, was less pessimistic. “We don’t have enough knowledge to be able to say such things,” he told Radio Cooperativa in Santiago, Chile. “We don’t know enough about the brain to compare it in such a direct way with a computer and foretell that computers are going to supplant brains,” he said. It is possible that human intelligence depends on the biological material in which it lies, so it cannot be copied to such an…